AZ-305 Practice Test 46 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A global e-commerce platform uses Azure Cosmos DB for its product catalog. The application requires multi-region writes to provide low-latency updates from any geographic location. Two users may update the same product item concurrently, so the solution must automatically resolve conflicts. For real-time inventory checks, reads must be strongly consistent, while product description reads can be eventually consistent. Which Cosmos DB configuration should they choose?

Accepted Answer

SQL API with multi-region writes, last-writer-wins conflict resolution, and per-request strong consistency. Option A is correct because the SQL API in Cosmos DB supports multi-region writes with last-writer-wins (LWW) conflict resolution using a timestamp or custom property, which automatically resolves concurrent updates to the same product item. Per-request strong consistency allows inventory reads to achieve linearizability by setting the consistency level at the request level, while product description reads can use the default session or eventual consistency for performance. This combination meets all requirements: multi-region writes, automatic conflict resolution, and the ability to mix strong and eventual consistency on a per-request basis.

Answer

MongoDB API with multi-region writes and automatic conflict resolution

Answer

Table API with multi-region writes and strong consistency

Answer

Cassandra API with multi-region writes and strong consistency

Question 2

A startup is building a social media analytics platform that processes streaming data. They need a data store for time-series events with high write throughput and fast timestamp-based range queries. Which Azure data store is most suitable for this workload?

Accepted Answer

Azure Table Storage. Azure Table Storage is a NoSQL key-value store that supports high-volume, low-latency writes and efficient range queries on the PartitionKey and RowKey, which can be structured as a timestamp for time-series data. Its schema-less design and ability to scale to massive throughput without sharding overhead make it ideal for streaming event ingestion and timestamp-based retrieval.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with SQL API

Answer

Azure SQL Database with columnstore index

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Question 3

A company stores petabytes of image files for a content delivery network. The images are accessed frequently for the first week, then rarely afterward. They must be retained for 5 years for compliance. The company wants to minimize storage costs while maintaining performance for frequently accessed data. Which storage solution and tier strategy should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Azure Blob Storage with a lifecycle policy: Hot for 7 days, Cool for the remainder of 5 years. Azure Blob Storage with a lifecycle policy is the correct solution because it automatically transitions blobs from the Hot tier (for frequent access during the first week) to the Cool tier (for rare access over the remaining 5 years), minimizing storage costs while maintaining low-latency performance for the initial high-access period. The Hot tier provides high throughput and low access costs for frequently read data, while the Cool tier offers lower storage costs for infrequently accessed data, meeting both performance and compliance retention requirements.

Answer

Azure Files with premium tier

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 with hot tier only

Answer

Azure Blob Storage with archive tier from day 1

Question 4

Match each Azure governance tool to its description.

Question 5

A company is building a petabyte-scale data lake for analytics. The workload includes Apache Spark and Hive jobs that read and write large files. The storage solution must support a hierarchical namespace for efficient directory operations, POSIX-like access control lists (ACLs) for fine-grained permissions, and must be accessible via the Azure Blob Storage API for compatibility with existing tools. Furthermore, the solution should be optimized for analytics workloads with high throughput. Which Azure data service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) is the correct choice because it combines a hierarchical namespace with POSIX-like ACLs and is accessible via the Azure Blob Storage API. This service is specifically optimized for analytics workloads like Apache Spark and Hive, providing high throughput for petabyte-scale data lakes. The hierarchical namespace enables efficient directory operations, while the Blob Storage API ensures compatibility with existing tools.

Answer

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1

Answer

Azure Blob Storage

Answer

Azure Files

Question 6

A company needs to store and analyze petabytes of semi-structured data from IoT devices. The data is append-only and written in time order. They need to support fast queries on time ranges and also aggregate data in real-time. Which Azure data service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Data Explorer. Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is purpose-built for high-performance analysis of large volumes of time-series and semi-structured data. It supports append-only ingestion, optimized time-range queries via its columnar storage and indexing, and real-time aggregation using Kusto Query Language (KQL) with built-in materialized views and update policies.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB

Answer

Azure SQL Database

Answer

Azure Table Storage

Question 7

A company needs to store sensor data from IoT devices. Each device sends a message every second. The data is time-series and will be queried for real-time dashboards and historical analysis. The solution must support high ingestion rates and low-latency queries on recent data. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Event Hubs and Azure Data Explorer. Azure Event Hubs is designed for high-throughput data ingestion from millions of IoT devices, capable of handling millions of events per second. Azure Data Explorer (ADX) is optimized for time-series data, providing sub-second query latency on recent data and efficient historical analysis. Together, they form a serverless pipeline that ingests sensor data via Event Hubs and stores it in ADX for real-time dashboards and long-term analytics.

Answer

Azure Blob Storage with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with SQL API

Answer

Azure Table Storage

Question 8

A company runs a SQL Server database on an Azure virtual machine. They need to increase the storage capacity and improve I/O performance for their transaction log. The current data disk is a standard HDD. They want to achieve higher IOPS and throughput without increasing the size of the VM (the VM size supports up to 8 data disks). The database workload is write-intensive on the transaction log. Which configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Replace the standard HDD disk with a premium SSD disk for the log drive. Option B is correct because replacing the standard HDD with a premium SSD directly addresses the need for higher IOPS and throughput for a write-intensive transaction log. Premium SSDs provide consistent low-latency performance and significantly higher IOPS/throughput compared to standard HDDs, without requiring a VM size change. Since the VM supports up to 8 data disks, a single premium SSD can meet the performance requirements more effectively than adding more HDDs.

Answer

Add additional standard HDD disks and configure a storage pool with simple (striping) layout

Answer

Add a premium SSD disk and configure a storage space with mirroring for the log drive

Answer

Use Azure Disk Encryption to improve performance

Question 9

A company runs a data analytics application that stores large volumes of structured data in a relational format. The data is write-intensive and the application needs to scale horizontally for high throughput. The solution must support SQL queries, including joins and ACID transactions. Which Azure database service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Hyperscale (Citus). Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Hyperscale (Citus) is correct because it provides horizontal scaling (sharding) across multiple nodes while preserving full SQL support, including JOINs and ACID transactions. Citus distributes data across worker nodes using a coordinator node, enabling write-intensive workloads to achieve high throughput through parallelized writes. This makes it ideal for large-volume, relational, write-heavy analytics applications that require relational integrity.

Answer

Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB (SQL API)

Answer

Azure Synapse Analytics

Question 10

A company uses Microsoft Entra ID (Microsoft Entra ID). They want to automatically detect identity risks, such as users with leaked credentials or sign-ins from anonymous IP addresses, and generate alerts. They also want to automatically trigger a password reset for high-risk users. Which Microsoft Entra ID feature should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft Entra ID Identity Protection. Microsoft Entra ID Identity Protection is the correct feature because it is specifically designed to automatically detect identity risks such as leaked credentials and sign-ins from anonymous IP addresses. It generates alerts based on risk detections and can be configured to automatically trigger remediation actions like forcing a password reset for high-risk users through risk-based policies.

Answer

Microsoft Entra ID Privileged Identity Management

Answer

Microsoft Entra ID Conditional Access

Answer

Microsoft Entra ID Access Reviews

Question 11

A company runs a global e-commerce application that stores customer order data. The data must be highly available and durable. The application requires strong consistency for all reads and writes. The company needs to store relational data (orders, customers) and handle complex queries with joins. They want a fully managed database service that supports active geo-replication for disaster recovery across two Azure regions with automatic failover. Which Azure database service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication. Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed relational database service that supports strong consistency, complex queries with joins, and active geo-replication across two Azure regions with automatic failover for disaster recovery. Active geo-replication creates readable secondary replicas in a paired region, and the application can manually or programmatically initiate failover to ensure high availability and durability while maintaining transactional consistency.

Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with multiple write regions and strong consistency

Answer

Azure Database for MySQL with read replicas

Answer

Azure SQL Managed Instance with failover groups

Question 12

A company runs a global e-commerce application that needs to store product catalog data. The data is JSON documents with variable schemas. The application requires single-digit millisecond read and write latencies at any scale and must support automatic synchronous replication across multiple Azure regions for high availability and low latency reads from any region. Which Azure data service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Cosmos DB with multi-region writes. Azure Cosmos DB with multi-region writes is the correct choice because it natively supports JSON documents with variable schemas, guarantees single-digit millisecond read and write latencies at any scale via its multi-homing API, and provides automatic synchronous replication across multiple Azure regions with active-active configurations. This ensures high availability and low-latency reads from any region without manual failover or data loss.

Answer

Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication

Answer

Azure Table Storage

Answer

Azure Database for PostgreSQL with read replicas

Question 13

A company stores log data in Azure Blob Storage. The logs are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then only occasionally for up to 1 year, and after that must be retained for 7 years for compliance purposes. The company wants to minimize storage costs by automatically moving data to cheaper tiers. Which Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management policy should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Move to Cool tier after 30 days, move to Archive tier after 365 days, delete after 2555 days. Option A is correct because it aligns with the access patterns: move to Cool tier after 30 days (frequent access period), move to Archive tier after 365 days (occasional access period ends), and delete after 2555 days (7 years retention). This minimizes costs by transitioning data to progressively cheaper storage tiers and automatically deleting it when compliance retention expires.

Answer

Move to Cool tier after 30 days, move to Archive tier after 365 days, delete after 7 years

Answer

Move to Cool tier after 30 days, move to Archive tier after 30 days, delete after 2555 days

Answer

Move to Archive tier after 30 days, keep in Archive until deletion after 2555 days

Question 14

A company wants to store application configuration settings and secrets (e.g., database connection strings, API keys) securely with automatic rotation. Access must be controlled and audited. Which Azure service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Azure Key Vault. Azure Key Vault is the correct choice because it is designed specifically for securely storing and managing secrets, keys, and certificates. It supports automatic rotation of secrets via integration with Azure managed identities and event grid notifications, and provides fine-grained access control through Azure RBAC and access policies, with full auditing via Azure Monitor and diagnostic logs.

Answer

Azure App Configuration

Answer

Azure Storage Queues

Answer

Azure Service Bus

Question 15

A financial company must store customer transaction records in Azure Blob Storage. Regulatory requirements mandate that the records must not be modified or deleted for 7 years. Even administrators must be unable to alter or remove the blobs during this period. Which Azure Blob Storage feature should they enable?

Accepted Answer

Immutable storage with time-based retention policy. Immutable storage with a time-based retention policy (WORM – Write Once, Read Many) ensures that blobs cannot be modified or deleted for a specified duration, even by administrators. This directly satisfies the 7-year regulatory requirement by locking the data at the storage level, overriding any delete or write operations.

Answer

Legal hold

Answer

Soft delete

Answer

Versioning